Natural History

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Jess posted this painting and several others that depict Afghan hound/saluki-type dogs in northern India during the eighteenth century.

This particular one caught my attention because it shows feathered saluki-type dogs and patterned Afghan hound-type dogs baying up a tiger.

Before you aski, the tiger is not life size.

This particular scene was painted by Pandit Nainsukh, who was given special access to the Raja Balwant Dev Singh.

The Raja was one of the Jasrotia rajputs, and this particular tiger hunt took place in Jarota, their capital on the Ujjh River in northern India, which is not very far from Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

This painting shows that the Afghan hound phenotype was not restricted solely to Afghanistan or adjacent regions in Pakistan. It was also found in India, and appparently, it existed within a landrace that included saluki-type dogs.

Salukis and Afghan hounds are regarded as separate breeds in the West, but for most of their history, they were varieties of a landrace that ranged throughout Central Asia to India  and west across the Middle East into North Africa. This type of sighthound also included smooth-coated dogs, which do exist in salukis and in Afghan hounds.

The differences between these breeds and their close relatives have largely been contrived by the Western fancy.

Historically, they were not kept separate from each other.   The idea that they would be is something that happened only when they became part of the Western dog fancy.

This is one of the oldest landraces still in existence. However, the lineages that produced the current dogs aren’t necessarily that old.

They have just remained outside of the Western dog gene pool, which has become contracted through breed formation, and this makes them look more ancient than actually are they are when their DNA is assayed.